At last he could contain himself no longer. Salvé had just deposited a coil of rope aft, and the captain, after watching his movements with evidently suppressed irritation, broke out suddenly, without preface of any kind—
"You, I believe, had some acquaintance with that—that Elizabeth Raklev
I took into my house."
Salvé felt the blood rush to his heart. He seemed to know what was coming.
"The post," the captain continued, in a bitterly contemptuous tone, "has brought me the delightful intelligence that my son has engaged himself to her."
"Congratulate you, captain," said Salvé. His voice almost failed him, and he was deadly pale, but his eyes flashed with a wild defiance.
He went forward, and the captain growled after him to himself, "He can have that to fret over now instead of the food;" and as the mate was coming up the cabin stairs at the moment polishing the sextant, he turned away with a look of grim satisfaction to take the altitude.
When the Juno last sailed from Arendal she had changed two of her crew. One of the new hands was a square-built, coarse-featured, uncouth-looking creature, from the fjord region north of Stavanger, who called himself Nils Buvaagen, but whose name had been changed by the others to Uvaagen (not-awake), on account of his evident predisposition to sleep. He was incredibly naïve and communicative, especially on the subject of his wife and children (of which latter he apparently had his nest full), and had soon become the butt of the ship. Salvé was the only one who ever took his part, and that only because he saw all the others against him; and having also been the means of saving his life when he had been washed overboard one dark night in the English Channel, he had inspired the simple fellow with a perfectly devoted attachment to him.
They were up on the mainyard together that evening, where they had been helping to carry out an order with the mainsail. The rest had gone down again, but Salvé, who felt a longing to be alone, had remained aloft, and was standing on the foot-rope, with his elbows resting on the yard. Nils's sympathetic eyes had perceived from his behaviour and whole appearance that day that there was something unusual the matter with him; and when he saw that Salvé remained behind, he remained too, observing that it would be pleasant to cool for a while before going to their hammocks in the close air between decks.
The sky above them blazed like a cupola "inlaid with patines of bright gold;" obliquely from the horizon the Southern Cross was rising, and the evening star shone in the warm night, before the moon had yet risen, with a silver gleam that threw clear light and shadow upon the deck below; while the vessel seemed to plough through a sea of phosphorescence, leaving in her wake a long trail of bluish glittering light.
From the forecastle below came wafted up a sentimental sailor's song, the burden of which was pretty well summed up in the two concluding lines:—